Diplo Talks Sample of the Millennium, the Return of Fun and Other Musical Secrets

Diplo from Major Lazer hangs at The Driskill Hotel in Austin, Texas, during SXSW.Photo: Eliot Van Buskirk/Wired.com

Say what you like about Major Lazer, but one thing the DJ duo is not is boring. That’s a pretty high compliment these days, when so many bands sound like carefully constructed hybrids of other bands we’ve heard before.

Years of club DJing, producing tracks for mainstream and underground artists alike, and applying their unique musical sensibilities to the latest technologies appear to have kept Major Lazer ahead of the game.

Meanwhile, a strong visual aesthetic — including a striking video directed by Eric Wareheim of Tim and Eric Awesome Show! that some consider obscene — doesn’t hurt their cause. The group has become widely known not only for its frantic, cutting-edge sound, but for its bizarre videos people can’t seem to help but share.

Wired.com sat down with Diplo, aka Wes Pentz, an American who along with British cohort Switch (aka Dave Taylor) and a rotating cast of singers make up Major Lazer, one of the rare major-label acts to play at the South by Southwest music festival last month in Austin, Texas.

In the following interview, edited for length and clarity, Diplo raps about recording found street sounds, the underground’s defeat of the cheesy club scene, and how he made the sample of the millennium for his ex-girlfriend, M.I.A.

Wired.com: You use a lot of interesting sounds in your recordings. What type of stuff did you pick up in Jamaica?

Diplo: Just interviews and random sounds — we use a lot of found sounds in all of our records, me and Switch. In New Orleans, we recorded brass bands and some of a songwriter’s demos, and used the guitar parts because the takes are so natural. Sometimes, impulsively, we might make a demo out of it and then go back and track it properly. I’m always working on like four albums at once, between New Orleans and Jamaica last month, so some stuff we start, some stuff we finish, and some stuff doesn’t make the cut, but I can stay busy all the time — it’s pretty cool.

Wired.com: It seems like that’s something a lot of bands could benefit from is working a little bit harder. Like, if you want to quit your day job, make it your day job.

Diplo: Luckily I’m a DJ as my job on the performance side of it, but as a producer, I know my way around programs and sounds so I’m able to do different styles. Bands have to give their band the full [effort], and they can’t really stray from that. Some guys really perfected that art, like Bjorn from Peter, Bjorn and John, who’s on Likke Li’s records — he developed her sound, and he does Peter, Bjorn and John stuff and The Hives, so he’s kind of able to play both sides, like a lot of the Swedish guys.

Klaus from the Teddybears, Bloodshy and Avant and Mike Snow, they’ve done lots of Britney Spears production. They went backwards from production to being in a band, which might be cool. I might do that too one day.

Wired.com: How is SXSW going?

Diplo: I love the culture of the DJs that we have here. Four years ago it was a lot harder for DJs than it is now. We were trying to play new records and the crowds weren’t really there, and we were working our asses off making our own tracks. Now, I went to a party last night, and it was all DJs — packed, all friends of mine, and we’re all playing new records and people are going crazy, so the vibe is definitely different. I feel like all the hard work has paid off, and we’ve developed a subculture around this new kind of attitude that DJs and producers are having.

Wired.com: What is the new attitude? To me, it seems like it’s “the return of fun.” Like, for a while there, people weren’t allowed to have fun.

Diplo: Yeah, definitely. DJ culture with house and club music was cold to people, because that’s what you do: You dress up in your suit and go to a New Jersey club or whatever. It’s cheesy, right? But then this underground thing happened — I’d say it started with the French guys, and then a lot of these young kids were starting to make music, like the kids on my label [Mad Decent] — Elvis 1990, Boy 8-Bit, Fake Blood, Blaqstarr.

With these kids we’re developing our styles and doing it really homegrown and localized, and then we’re going to mix things up. We don’t have preconditions of what’s cool and what’s not. Even if I’m a black kid making Baltimore club music, I can use a little bit of gay house music, or techno, or a little bit of dubstep or a rock riff — there’s really no holds barred in the way we’re producing now. All that matters is that it sounds good, has a big drop, and gets people to go crazy. It doesn’t matter if it’s fucking cool, or if it’s underground, or if it’s commercial. We can throw a little bit of everything in there.

Wired.com: So it’s back to quality and fun, instead of, “Is this in style”?

Diplo: The stuff that lasts is the stuff that’s striking. We did a record called Pon de Floor with Major Lazer and [the title track, playable to the right] didn’t sound like anything else. When we did it, it was kind of buried in the album, but it just rose up to the top because it represented this electric kind of sound. We’re not using any synths — we’re just using a voice and chopping things up, so it was striking to people; it didn’t sound like anything else. You can hear it right away.

It’s very competitive, this crew we have, of DJs — competitive about how good it sounds, like how good our mixing and mastering is, because that’s a fucking skill that we all hone and try to compete with each other. It’s also how different it sounds, and how it can be integrated into a set. Those are three qualities a record has to have if you’re a producer. And at the other end, I’m still producing pop and R&B records, and I take a little bit of what I learn in the club scene with my friends and take a little of that pop style, and try to use it to my advantage and just keep learning.

Wired.com: You guys have some great videos, and that attracts attention. Obviously, music is an auditory thing, but how important is video, and what’s your strategy with the videos? Are you a YouTube partner, for instance?

Diplo: Definitely, we’re just starting out [but] to see our videos reach a million views — it’s definitely a way to market the record. Some kids might check The Hype Machine or trade MP3s around, but if the video’s crazy, everybody’s going to be turned on to that song, like, “That was so funny I want to watch it again, I want to listen to it again.”

Our [Eric Wareheim-directed] video for “Pon de Floor” reached a half a million views before it got cut off for being indecent [view it above], and then we put it back on again and it got like half a million views, and then an actual still [frame] from the video started to grow, because people had watched the video and then they wanted to watch the still, and that’s at over a million now. It just shows that people listen to music on YouTube and Lala. Kids listen to mixes of whatever they want to hear — it’s quicker than doing MySpace, it’s an instant [thing]. So we utilize that, we take advantage of it. A good video is just going to carry it a little bit longer.

A good example is Die Antwoord , those South African guys. Their video was so eclectic and crazy that they got all the buzz so quickly, it reached a million views in under a month. Now they’re in America — I was even hanging out with those guys a couple days ago in New York. It just goes to show that you can actually take that buzz and generate something for you, if it’s powerful enough.

Labels try so hard to make these striking, crazy videos, but if the song doesn’t match, it doesn’t really matter. You have to have some quality. For us, the music’s got to be quality, 100 percent, but our project, Major Lazer, is a little bit hard to market because it’s like reggae, it’s eclectic, it’s mad artists — it’s not one star involved — it’s more like a team. The Gorillaz is a good example of the kind of pattern we try to follow. I think our music is 100 percent quality first, but then we launched the whole idea of it. The style has to be strong too, and I took cues from people like M.I.A., The Clash and Elvis Presley — people that have strong images. A good example is Justice — you can never separate the cross and their iconic leather jacket image from their music.

Even if you forget their music, what it sounds like, you’re going to know those dudes by what they look like right away. It can’t be fake. I think our project is ridiculous and crazy and funny and stupid and that’s what our videos kind of represent — it’s back to having fun and being crazy.

Wired.com: What about the art of sampling as a real instrument — how is that evolving right now? It used to seem like the serious guitar dudes were critical, but it seems like that’s going away. What’s your stance on that?

Diplo: I think everyone who plays an instrument and comes from a real musical background is a bit perturbed by sampling in general. It might be ignorance to begin with — like, they don’t like hip-hop because “it’s an ignorant form of music and they’re not creating anything.” I think one of the biggest haters of our stuff is always going to be the guy from Black Flag, Henry Rollins. He just always hated. We actually sampled him on Major Lazer — we couldn’t clear it, we had to change the riff around a little bit, which sucked because it was kind of a statement. Always, when we sample, I try to be making statements.

I think “Paper Planes” is a good example because it’s a song that represents Maya’s attitude. It sampled a Clash record — the goal is to try to reach people and give the song more depth. It’s hard to pick up on it, but if you do dig into it, people are like, “Damn, that’s an all-around song now” when they understand the sample source.

On the new record I’ve just done for her that might be the single, I sampled a bunch of gospel-y, old-school, Alabama, weird, Sacred Harp singers — it’s turning into an Animal Collective kind of record, which represents a total departure from what you would expect from her, but that’s where her head was at. She just had a baby so she was on this elated [mood]. With her it’s always sort of random, whatever you think was not going to be productive — that ended up being a really shitty demo and it turned into a big song. You’ve got to do something that makes you go, “Woah, that’s fuckin’ weird, it’s crazy.” That’s kind of the story of my career — I just have a bunch of accidents and then every once in a while I clean it up.

Wired.com: When I first heard that “Paper Planes” sample — I was a huge fan of that era of The Clash — I just couldn’t believe how great it was. It’s the sample of the millennium. I didn’t view it in any way as theft, because it has a totally different flavor, it just recontextualizes the sample. Do you think that makes the difference, that you picked such a different context?

Diplo: Definitely, I think a lot of the young kids they don’t even know the sample. Me and you are from a different generation that grew up with that music, and these kids, they’re growing up on M.I.A., and she represents The Clash to them. There’s not any other artist that is forward-thinking, doing stuff that sounds cutting-edge, and also songs that are quality. [The young kids] just kind of got the pop stuff — they need something that has a strong backbone.

It’s all replayed, by the way — it’s not like a proper sample, because I wanted to take some parts away and make it a bit fatter. I was actually referencing “Maps” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs more than anything, with the high strings. They never drop into the dubby break that The Clash has, and I like that idea of sustained energy on a song. It never goes anywhere, but you’re always ready. It’s a tricky thing to do — we did it on “Hold the Line,” where it’s got this fill. It almost runs on a guitar fill, and it never drops into, like, the thing. It’s tricky to do that — the energy’s crazy, a lot of people don’t pick up on that attitude, but it’s always bouncing and striking.

Wired.com: Do you think it helps with short attention spans? Like, if you never get there, then people can’t leave.

Diplo: Yeah, exactly. I definitely have to deal with short-attention-span people — I’m one of the biggest ADD characters you could find — but I feel like we’re bringing something new out of it. We’re taking things that are kind of tricks, and making them into their own little genres now. With those kinds of records it’s always about trying to do something different and shake things up.

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